Sources of Islamic Theories of Reproduction: Difference between revisions

The Prophet [[Muhammad]], who had been a well-traveled merchant, had extensive interactions with Jews in Arabia, and almost certainly with Nestorian Christians, who had large communities in Najran in the south and Hira to the north of the Arabian Peninsula.<ref>J. Stewart, "Nestorian Missionary Enterprise", p.70-74, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928</ref><ref>Cyril Glasse, “The New Encyclopedia of Islam”, p.342-343, CA, USA: Altamira, 2001.</ref> Guillaume says of the Nestorians, “Such men were a familiar sight on all the caravan routes of Arabia”.<ref>Alfred Guillaume, “Islam”, p.15, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1990 (Reprinted)</ref> The Nestorians were based in Syria, where they already possessed and studied the works of Galen, the hugely influential 2^nd century Greek physician.<ref>Allen O. Whipple, “[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1965836/pdf/bullnyacadmed00860-0027.pdf Role of the Nestorians as the connecting link between Greek and Arab medicine]”, Annals of Medical History 8 (1936) 313-323</ref> While this does not necessitate that the creators of the Qur’an and hadith directly copied from these works, it seems likely that they were, at the very least, indirectly influenced by these widespread ideas.

A nice example of nutfah usage can be found in a pre-Islamic poem where it is used to mean “the small quantity of wine that remained in a wineskin”.<ref>Irfan Shahid, “Byzantium and the Arabs in the sixth century. Volume 2, Part 2”, p.145, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2009</ref>

Ibn Kathir’s [[Tafsir|commentary]] on this verse gives a very useful definition of nu<U>t</U>fah from Muhammad’s companions.

In each case, the word translated “fluid” is m<U>a</U>a<ref>For the Arabic: http://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=0&tTafsirNo=7&tSoraNo=76&tAyahNo=2&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=1</ref> (see above for definition), so there is no case for retro-fitting the sperm or ovum into it. Similar comments from Muhammad’s [[Sahabah|companions]] appear in [[al-Tabari]]’s Tafsir on 76:2. His companions apparently believed that the mingled nu<U>t</U>fah was a mixture of male and female semen.

The Qur’anic verses that are most explicit in stating that the embryo is initially formed out of semen, as per Galen and Hippocrates, are shown below.  

In both cases, the “firm lodging” (qararin makeenin) obviously refers to the womb, with 77:22 adding that it is for a “known extent”. It certainly does not mean the female ovum, which is only penetrated by a single sperm cell and not the “liquid disdained”.

=== The four stages of embryo development ===

{{Quote|{{Quran|22|5}}|O mankind! if ye have a doubt about the Resurrection, <b>(consider) that We created you out of dust, then out of sperm, then out of a leech-like clot, then out of a morsel of flesh, partly formed and partly unformed, in order that We may manifest (our power) to you; and We cause whom We will to rest in the wombs for an appointed term, then do We bring you out as babes,</b> then (foster you) that ye may reach your age of full strength; and some of you are called to die, and some are sent back to the feeblest old age, so that they know nothing after having known (much), and (further), thou seest the earth barren and lifeless, but when We pour down rain on it, it is stirred (to life), it swells, and it puts forth every kind of beautiful growth (in pairs).}}{{Quote|{{Quran|23|12-14}}|Man We did create from a quintessence (of clay); Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of rest, firmly fixed; Then We made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood; then of that clot We made a (foetus) lump; then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh; then we developed out of it another creature. So blessed be Allah, the best to create!}}

As mentioned in the [https://corpuscoranicum.de/en Corpus Coranicum Project,]  the stages of embryo development described in the Qur'an reflect the medical knowledge of the late antique world, compatible with seventh-century AD understanding.<ref>Corpus Coranicum Project - [https://corpuscoranicum.de/en/verse-navigator/sura/22/verse/5/intertexts/986 Galen De Semine I, 8]

David Kiltz (with the collaboration of Yousef Kouriyhe) (revised by Vasiliki Chamourgiotaki), Letter to Archdeacon Mar Julian - TUK_955. In: Texts from the Environment of the Koran, edited by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities by Michael Marx, with contributions by Sebastian Bitsch, Vasiliki Chamourgiotaki, Emmanouela Grypeou, Dirk Hartwig, Nestor Kavvadas, David Kiltz, Yousef Kouriyhe, Mohammed Maraqten, Adrian Pirtea, Veronika Roth, Johanna Schubert and Nicolai Sinai. Beta version: as of July 28, 2024.</ref>  

 

 

We see the idea of three layers of darkness.

Ibn Qayyim (d. 1350), a prominent Hanbali jurist, links these to different membranes being mentioned by Hippocrates, quoting previous scholars opinions on the matter.

See also {{quran-range|23|12|14}} to see how the nu<U>t</U>fah and subsequent stages fit together. Now let us compare with the Talmud:

(Part b comes after each mishnah and is the Rabbinic commentary, called Gemara, on the mishnah in part a). Notice also that like in the Qur’an, the embryo is formed from semen.

See also {{Muslim||2645c|reference}} quoted above, for example. Once again, we see that this is an idea from the Talmud:

It should, however, be noted that in the next hadith, number 6393, the angel who comes after 40 days creates the child’s flesh and bones and then gender is determined. In number 6397 (also appears in Sahih Bukhari), gender is determined once the fetus has become a “lump of flesh”.

The same thing is reported in Berakoth 60a.<ref name="Berakoth 60a"></ref> Notice also a two-semens theory again. In most versions of this hadith the determining factor in resemblance is whose water (m<U>a</U>a i.e. semen) preceded (sabaqa) the other person’s water. In other versions it is whose water is on or upon (‘ala) the other’s, which is closer to various Greek theories in which resemblance or gender is caused by semens prevailing upon each other.<ref>Iain M. Lonie, “The Hippocratic Treatises ‘On generation’, ‘On the nature of the child’, ‘Diseases IV’”, pp.125-126, Berlin; New York: de Gruyter, 1981</ref><ref>See Galen’s description of Strato’s theory of sex determination in “On Semen”, p.183, and De Lacy’s notes on p.242. Galen postulates a semen prevailance theory of resemblance on p.179-181.<BR />Available on [https://cmg.bbaw.de/epubl/online/cmg_05_03_01.php The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences website] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20230909084119/https://cmg.bbaw.de/epubl/online/cmg_05_03_01.php archive])</ref> In one case ({{Muslim||315a|reference}}), it is gender rather than resemblance that is determined in this way and maniyy is used rather than m<U>a</U>a.{{Quote|1=Aristotle (d. 322 BC) in ''[https://www.google.com/books/edition/De_Generatione_Animalium/WhRDAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 De Generatione Animalium]'', 764a 6 as quoted in {{citation|page=191|editor=Philip Wheelwright|publisher=Macmillan|year=1966|title=The Presocratics|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Presocratics/B9QDAQAAIAAJ?hl=en}}|2=T 22. Democritus of Abdera says that it [gender] is determined in the womb whether the offspring is to be male or female. He denies, however, the theory [of Empedocles] that heat and cold are what make the difference; it depends, he thinks, upon which of the two parents' generative fluids prevails--i.e., that part of the fluid which has come from the distinctively male or female parts [rather than the part which has come from the body as a whole]. Of the two theories that of Democritus is the better; for he is trying to discover and specify the exact way in which the sexes become differentiated; but whether he is right or not is another matter. (''De Generatione Animalium'' 764a 6)}}

Searching for some kind of reference to sperm (rather than merely semen), which was not discovered until the 17^th century, some Islamic apologists point to the following hadith:

The first thing to point out is that the word translated “sperm” in the apologists’ translation is actually m<U>a</U>a in the Arabic, which as mentioned above, means water/fluid and is a euphemism for semen. This is also apparent in another translation of the exact same hadith:

While on the subject of ‘azl, and another practice, ghila, which is a man having intercourse with his wife while she is suckling, we see that Muhammad openly admits to his knowledge of and interest in the reproductive practices of the Byzantines (“Romans”) and Sassanids (“Persians”):

Of the two centers of Galenic study mentioned above, Syria was under the Sassinid empire and Egypt was under both the Sassinids and Byzantines at different times during Muhammad’s career. Muhammad did not live in a bubble. These hadith suggest that Muhammad would have had access to and had interest in the practices and ideas regarding sexual matters and reproduction transmitted by these other cultures.

Some Islamic apologists suggest that this hadith in the Musnad Ahmad hadith collection is a reference to the sperm and ovum. However, as shown by the ibn Kathir quote above, not only were these understood to be male and female fluids, but this is once again the Galenic two-semens theory. Indeed, the remainder of the very same hadith (which is almost never included upon reference) explicitly affirms the two-semens theory, and proceeds to describe the different purposes of each of the two semens in a manner that is, needless to say, plainly unscientific and inaccurate.

See the references section for a link to the Arabic<ref>For the Arabic see #4424: http://hadith.al-islam.com/Page.aspx?pageid=192&TOCID=35&BookID=30&PID=4206</ref>. Not only is it apparent that the male nu<U>t</U>fah is none other than semen (“thick”), but the process described is completely wrong from a scientific perspective. The origins of these ideas can be traced as far back as the Talmud:

Also notable is that this hadith and the Talmud have striking similarities with what Galen taught in his work, “On Semen”, Galen says:

In any case, this hadith is graded as having weak authenticity. {{Muslim||315a|reference}} is a similar hadith, which instead of mentioning nutfah and saying what is formed from each semen, gives the resemblance theory mentioned above after saying that the man’s water (m<U>a</U>a) is white and the woman’s water (m<U>a</U>a) is yellow. {{Muslim||311|reference}} is a version of the hadith we look at next, but adds that the man’s water is thick and white and the woman’s water is thin and yellow.

This, again, is Galen’s idea about “female semen”. Even Muhammad’s reasoning in the hadith is clearly the same as Galen’s, whose main thesis in the 2^nd part of 'On Semen' is that a generative female semen exists and causes resemblance to the mother. Like Muhammad in this hadith, Galen explicitly uses fluid emitted during nocturnal orgasm as evidence for the existence of a female semen that causes resemblance:

As the hadith is talking about a fluid that a woman can see, it has nothing to do with oviductal secretions or the jelly-like coating of the ovum produced by the ovarian folicle during her monthly ovulation (in any case it is the ovum that is the source of the female genetic contribution, not this coating). Furthermore, the hadith is saying that resemblance is caused by a semen released during the female orgasm. Orgasm has nothing to do with the genetic contribution of the woman to the embryo. There are many narrations of this hadith in which the imagined female semen is released during orgasm, as Hippocrates and Galen believed.<ref>Jean Claude Guillebaud, “The Tyranny of Pleasure”, p.171, New York: Algora Publishing, 1999</ref>

==Other apologetic claims==

Some Islamic apologists have hence turned to other arguments to find a reference to sperm (not just semen) or the female ovum in the Qur’an. They are considered below. Qur’an translations are Sahih International’s.

An Islamic apologist has made the following claim about the word nutfah in an attempt to make it sound like a single sperm:

The first line is the apologist's generalization based on the second line, which is his attempted translation of a definition in the Lisan al-Arab dictionary of classical Arabic.<ref>[http://www.baheth.info/all.jsp?term=%D9%86%D8%B7%D9%81 Lisan Al-Arab dictionary, Book 5, Pages 725]</ref>

However the quotation has been truncated, mistranslated, and is of the definition for the wrong word (na<U>t</U>af – pearls or earrings), which has the same n-t-f root as nu<U>t</U>fah.

His claim has been copied on other Islamic websites, one even attempting to evolve the claim further by suggesting that this 'mistaken' generalization actually appears in the Lisan al-Arab definition. Lisan al-Arab’s actual definition of nu<U>t</U>fah is a little amount (qalil, قليل) of water (see beginning of this article). Note that even if we supposed that nu<U>t</U>fah had meant a single drop, a sperm is a discrete object from among many of the same discrete objects, unlike a drop of water, which is an amount of something from a larger amount.

However, as demonstrated above, nu<U>t</U>fah meant a small quantity of liquid, in this context in reference to semen that was believed to form the embryo, whereas maniyy is simply semen. Whenever the Qur’an mentions nu<U>t</U>fah, which indicates the small quantity of liquid, it is emphasizing the humble beginnings of man. In the hadiths that use maniyy, it is a different context where the quantity is irrelevant. We also saw in the Lisan al-Arab dictionary above that maniyy is called nutfah because it is a small amount of liquid.

Tumn<U>a</U> in 53:46 and yumn<U>a</U> in 75:37 is the same verb meaning "to emit", and from the same root as maniyy. The same verb is understandably used if it is talking about the emission of the same thing, semen, but without explicitly stating the type of liquid in 53:46. In any case, the evidence is unanimous that nu<U>t</U>fah is always used for a liquid.

The word translated “posterity” in Sahih International’s translation is nasl, which means progeny (i.e. descendants).<ref>[http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume8/00000286.pdf Lane’s Lexicon Vol. 8 p.3032]</ref> It is a reasonable assumption that ma-in m<U>a</U>heen'''in''' (liquid disdained) means male semen here (see 86:6-7, which too uses maa). Some apologists like to read sul<U>a</U>latin<ref>[http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume4/00000121.pdf Lane’s Lexicon Vol. 4 p.1397]</ref> (“extract”) as a reference to sperm. There are a couple of problems with this. First, it ignores the role of the female ovum (this is a problem with pretty much any interpretation of the verse). Secondly, we can compare 32:8 with 77:20, which has the exact same last 3 words, and without the word extract.

This suggests that the extract is or is of the same substance as the disdained liquid. As we saw above, the next two verses, 77:21-22, indicate that this liquid is gestated in the womb. There are various possible meanings for this verse, but even if it is interpreted as saying that only a special part of semen forms the embryo, that belief would have been common among the Jews with whom Muhammad was acquainted, as we saw from the Talmud quoted earlier:

At the same time, various difficulties and problems may be observed in their theory. {{Quran-range|37|7|9}} provides context to verses that mention dust before other stages. It clarifies that the first man was created from dust, and his progeny from "liquid disdained" (a synonym for nutfah, as discussed in this article). The authors try to explain "disdained" here by appealing to an obscure and certainly metaphorical mid 7th century Syriac passage on baptismal theology which compares the race of Adam to water polluted by the devil. <ref>Ibid. p. 101, pp. 154-161</ref> As argued elsewhere in this article, another passage, {{Quran-range|77|20|22}} mentions liquid disdained placed in a firm lodging (similar to {{Quran|23|13}} which instead uses the word nutfah), and is easily understood as semen placed in the womb in line with Greek and Talmudic concepts. Eich and Dorotei interpret the "firm lodging" as a prominent fixed place and attempt a connection with the creation story, though their evidence may seem very thin here.<ref>Ibid. pp. 156-61</ref> Some may also find it hard to see how the disdained liquid being placed there for a known extent/determination in {{Quran|77|22}} sounds like the creation of Adam more than gestation in the womb.

Eich and Doroftei present virtually no positive evidence that the nutfah and later stages were ever interpreted by early Muslims as descriptions of Adam's creation (nor would this be expected if they are correct that the Quran had already been edited to reframe the meaning to a pre-natal context). Nevertheless, even if they are correct that Q. 23:14 and some other verses were edited or interpolated to reframe the original context of nutfah, alaqah, and mudghah, the Quran as we have it ''today'' certainly uses these terms with a pre-natal meaning in at least some passages, reflecting the influence of pre-scientific contemporary beliefs which are also apparent to an even greater extent in hadiths, as demonstrated in this article.